Sources: Intel planning large number of layoffs in New Devices Group, its wearables division
Update 11/19: Intel is denying that the company is stepping back from wearables, though has not directly commented on the layoff news. Here is the company's statement in full,
Context & Ripple Effects
The New Devices Group layoffs land inside a broader retrenchment: months earlier, sources told the Oregonian that Intel was planning job cuts significantly larger than last year's 1,100, so the wearables division is one visible casualty of a company-wide cost push. Intel's response — denying it is stepping back from wearables without addressing the layoffs directly — leaves the division's fate ambiguous.
What makes this worth watching is how the arc resolves: within a year the Basis smartwatch line is gone entirely as Intel eliminates its wearables work (per CNBC), and by 2018 the company shuts down the group formed in 2013 to make fitness trackers and smart glasses (The Information). The 2016 layoffs read, in hindsight, as the first step of a staged exit from consumer wearables toward AR-focused research.
First-order effects
- New Devices Group employees face large-scale layoffs now, while Intel publicly maintains it remains committed to wearables — leaving the Basis team working under a denial that contradicts the sourcing.
Second-order effects
- With Intel pulling back on devices like fitness trackers and smart glasses, the consumer-wearables field loses one of the few chip giants betting its own silicon on dedicated wearable hardware, shifting that market toward device makers rather than component suppliers building end products.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — layoffs in 2016, division eliminated in 2017, group shut down in 2018 — Intel's structure points toward exiting consumer hardware categories wholesale and concentrating on core silicon plus selective new bets like AR, a template its later rounds of thousands-strong job cuts repeat at larger scale.
The trend: Intel is steadily narrowing its hardware ambitions, winding down consumer-device divisions like wearables to refocus on core chips and selectively chosen frontiers such as AR.